In case you missed it, one of my big focus goals for February is to do a big clean-out of both of our freezers (we have one attached to our refrigerator in our kitchen, and another stand-alone freezer out in our garage). I’ve already cleared out everything that I knew we were never going to use or that just wasn’t good anymore, and now I’m left with the “for sure” keep stuff as well as the “meh, maybe” stuff. Since I know the “for sure” will definitely get used without me trying too hard, I’m doing weekly challenges around the rest in order to give myself a hard deadline to use up all the maybes.
If, by the end of the challenge (which will likely extend into March), I haven’t used up all the stuff I was on the fence about, I’m going to let myself trash it, guilt-free.
Here’s what’s on the challenge block for Week One:
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Plan for the Week
Mixed fruit – use up in smoothies (easy, peasy)
Brown bananas – make our favorite banana bread recipe from this gluten-free cookbook (which is actually part of Amazon’s current B1G150% promotion), which uses a whopping FIVE bananas per loaf
Riced cauliflower – I don’t plan to use all four bags this week, but rather just want to start with one. I bought this on a whim as I was trying easy ways to fit more produce into our lives, and I’ve literally never tried it. It’s been like, 6 months. Anyway, I figure I’ll just use this as a base to go with either the entree I do with the pork, or as something to go with the tilapia. This should be fairly straightforward to use up, especially if we end up really liking it.
Pork stew meat – this isn’t a cut I normally go for, but we got this from my mom awhile ago and just haven’t used it yet (mostly because I’m not super familiar with it). I figure I’ll just find a really simple Chinese- or Mexican-inspired recipe that involves some kind of sauce, and then I can serve the whole thing over the cauliflower rice. (If you have any suggestions on how to use this up, please let me know!)
Tilapia – I go through phases with fish. Sometimes I crave it out of the blue and will eat it multiple times over a couple of weeks, but most of the time, I don’t really think about it as a possibility. I have a bunch of simple recipes for broiled tilapia that I like, so I just need to commit to doing that one night and call it good.
Next week, I’ll report back as to how this week’s challenge went AND I’ll introduce what’s on the challenge block for that week.
I would love it if you joined along with your own freezer challenge! Drop a comment below with some of the “maybe” stuff in your freezer that you want to set a deadline for, and let’s keep each other accountable 🙂
